A systematic scoping review of ethical issues in mentoring in medical schools

Abstract

Background: Mentoring provides mentees and mentors with holistic support and research opportunities. Yet, the quality of this support has been called into question amidst suggestions that mentoring is prone to bullying and professional lapses. These concerns jeopardise mentoring's role in medical schools and demand closer scrutiny. Methods: To better understand prevailing concerns, a novel approach to systematic scoping reviews (SSR) s is proposed to map prevailing ethical issues in mentoring in an accountable and reproducible manner. Ten members of the research team carried out systematic and independent searches of PubMed, Embase, ERIC, ScienceDirect, Scopus, OpenGrey and Mednar databases. The individual researchers employed 'negotiated consensual validation' to determine the final list of articles to be analysed. The reviewers worked in three independent teams. One team summarised the included articles. The other teams employed independent thematic and content analysis respectively. The findings of the three approaches were compared. The themes from non-evidence based and grey literature were also compared with themes from research driven data. Results: Four thousand six titles were reviewed and 51 full text articles were included. Findings from thematic and content analyses were similar and reflected the tabulated summaries. The themes/categories identified were ethical concerns, predisposing factors and possible solutions at the mentor and mentee, mentoring relationship and/or host organisation level. Ethical concerns were found to stem from issues such as power differentials and lack of motivation whilst predisposing factors comprised of the mentor's lack of experience and personality conflicts. Possible solutions include better program oversight and the fostering of an effective mentoring environment. Conclusions: This structured SSR found that ethical issues in mentoring occur as a result of inconducive mentoring environments. As such, further studies and systematic reviews of mentoring structures, cultures and remediation must follow so as to guide host organisations in their endeavour to improve mentoring in medical schools.

A systematic scoping review of approaches to teaching and assessing empathy in medicine

“…Therefore, the research team differentiated grey literature such as correspondence, letters, editorials and perspective pieces extracted from academic databases, from data-driven and research-based peer reviewed articles. Both were analysed independently, and the themes derived from the grey literature were found to be in agreement with themes from the peer-reviewed literature [ 21 – 23 , 34 – 37 ].…”

“…The reflexive nature of systematic scoping reviews (SSR)s and their lack of structure raises concerns over their reproducibility and transparency. To overcome this, we adopted Krishna’s novel Systematic Evidence Based Approach (SEBA) [ 21 – 23 ]. Compared to other existing SSR approaches [ 24 ], SEBA acknowledges the complex nature of empathy and the need to evaluate how empathy is nurtured and assessed in different programs, involving different education and healthcare structures and funding.…”

“…Krishna’s Split Approach was employed to enhance the trustworthiness of the data analyses [ 21 , 28 ]. The Split Approach saw two independent teams of at least three experienced researchers carrying out concurrent analysis of the included articles using Braun and Clarke [ 29 ]’s approach to thematic analysis and Hsieh and Shannon [ 30 ]’s approach to directed content analysis.…”

The impact of death and dying on the personhood of medical students: a systematic scoping review

“…An SSR allows for a structured approach to systematic extraction, synthesis of actionable and applicable information and a summary of available literature across a wide range of settings [ 27 – 30 ]. To overcome concerns about the transparency and reproducibility of SSRs, we adopt Krishna’s Systematic Evidence Based Approach (SEBA) [ 31 – 37 ].…”

A Scoping Review of Differential Attainment in Undergraduate Medicine

“…22 One-to-one mentoring can create conditions to develop professional competences, such as reflective capacity, emotional competence and the feeling of belonging to a professional community. 23 In addition to tensions of gender or sexual orientation, DA in access to mentorship can stem from issues such as power differentials or personality conflicts 24 and racial, social or cultural differences between the mentor and mentee. Often lack of role models, inexperience of the mentor, lack of motivation or institutional support may affect the access to membership for certain disadvantaged or minority groups.…”